Gendered Effects of Crop Diversification and Climate Shocks on Household Food Security Status in Nigeria

This paper studies the impact of climate shocks and crop diversification on household food security in Nigeria by focusing on gender-disaggregated effects. We combine historical rainfall and temperature datasets with the World Bank’s Living Standards Measurement Study - Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) for Nigeria. Furthermore, we use an adapted version of the crop diversification Weighted Shannon index (WSI) to measure crop diversification. The food security indicators adopted are the Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS), the reduced Coping Strategy Index (rCSI), and the per capita food expenditures. We use a set of panel and dynamic panel models for our analysis, and our results show that climate shocks have negative effects on food security, especially in households with men plot managers. However, we find that crop diversification is positively linked to food security. Our results show the need to target policies to encourage crop diversification in households and promote crop diversification components in women empowerment programs